Abstract:
In recent years, ransomware has been a notable theme in news reports of malicious Internet activity. However, even with such notable cases as WannaCry, Petya, and Bad Rabbit in 2017, the overall volume of ransomware has dropped significantly during the past year. This presentation discusses recent trends and provides a counterpoint to media reporting that tends to sensationalize ransomware. To understand today's trends, we also review a history of ransomware to show how current samples lack the innovation of previous years. These trends indicate ransomware has become less of an overall danger in today's threat landscape.

Bio:
After 21 years of classified intelligence work for the US Air Force, Brad transitioned to cyber security in 2010, and he is a currently a Threat Intelligence Analyst for Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. Brad specializes in network traffic analysis. He is also a handler for the Internet Storm Center (ISC) and has posted more than 100 diaries at isc.sans.edu. Brad routinely blogs technical details and analysis of infection traffic at www.malware-traffic-analysis.net, where he provides traffic analysis exercises and over 1,000 malware and pcap samples to a growing community of information security professionals.